They had not journeyed much further when they heard the surging roar of waves.

The river arrives as a noise before it is a sight. 滔滔 is water piling on water, 浪響 the sound it makes. 聽得 takes 得 as dé — managed to hear.

Eight Rules said: "That's torn it — we've come to the road's very end."

罷了 at the head of a line is a groan, not a polite "that's all" — Bajie has decided the journey is over. The ruby reads 罷 as ba here. 盡頭路 is the road's dead end.

Sha Monk said: "It is a stretch of water barring the way."

一股水 treats the river as a single running strand — 股 is the measure word for anything that flows in a length. 擋住: barred, blocked.

The Tang Monk said: "However are we to get across?"

怎生得渡, how are we to manage the crossing. 得 is dé, to manage or attain — one of this chapter's busiest characters, and worth watching, because it also does two other jobs further down.

Eight Rules said: "Let me test it and see how deep or shallow it is."

試之 is "test it," with the bookish 之 for the object. 深淺何如: how deep or shallow.

Tripitaka said: "Wuneng, no idle talk — how are you to test the depth of the water?"

悟能, Wuneng, is Bajie's monastic name — Tripitaka uses it when he is being severe. 藏 in 三藏 is zàng; 試得 takes 得 as dé.

Eight Rules said: "Find a goose-egg cobble and toss it into the midst.

鵝卵石 is a "goose-egg stone," a water-rounded cobble — the same picture English gets from "pebble." 中 in 當中 is zhōng.

If it throws up bubbles, the water is shallow;

濺起水泡: splash bubbles up. Bajie's theory is that shallow water fizzes.

if it goes down with a gurgling plunge, the water is deep."

骨都都 is a sound-word — the glug of something going under — and the doubled 都 is read dū, not the dōu that means "all." Bajie's depth-gauge is entirely acoustic, and about as reliable as it sounds.

Pilgrim said: "Go and try it, then."

試試看, "give it a go"; 看 is kàn.

The blockhead groped out a lump of stone and flung it into the water; they heard only a gurgle as it stirred up a bubbling froth and sank to the bottom.

And the experiment yields exactly nothing useful. 那獃子 points — nà; 中 in 水中 is zhōng; 聽得 takes 得 as dé. 骨都都 comes round again with 都 as dū. 魚津 is "fish-spittle," the froth of bubbles a fish leaves — a lovely word for a plume of nothing.

He cried: "Deep, deep, deep — there's no crossing it!"

深深深, three times, then 去不得 — 得 as dé, "cannot be got across."

The Tang Monk said: "You have tested the depth, but you still do not know how broad it is."

Tripitaka has spotted the flaw in the method. 試得 takes 得 as dé; 寬闊 is breadth.

Eight Rules said: "That, indeed, I do not know — I do not know."

The doubled 不知 is Bajie's shrug put into words.

Pilgrim said: "Let me have a look."

看看: have a look. 看 is kàn.

The Great Sage, springing up on his somersault-cloud, leapt into the air, fixed his gaze, and beheld this:

觔斗雲 is the somersault-cloud, Wukong's one-leap transport; 斗 is dòu here, the tumbling sense, not the grain measure that turns up later in the chapter. 觀 in 觀看 is guān; 中 in 空中 is zhōng. Then 但見那 — 那 pointing, nà — the printer's standing signal that verse is about to start, and the line breaks off at the colon.

Vast and gleaming, its light steeped the moon; / boundless its breadth, its mirrored image bore up the sky.

The opening pair of the river-poem. 洋洋 and 浩浩 are both "vast," doubled for weight, and between them they do nothing but establish scale: light lying on the moon, the sky floating on the water's reflection.

Its numinous currents would swallow Mount Hua; / its long flood threads a hundred streams.

靈派 is the river's spirit-charged current; 華岳 is Mount Hua, the western of the Five Great Peaks, and the claim is that this water could swallow it. 長流 takes 長 as cháng, long, not zhǎng.

A thousand layers of surging billows roll; / ten thousand folds of steep waves toss.

千層 and 萬疊, a thousand layers and ten thousand folds, are the stock exaggeration of water-poetry. Nobody is counting.

At the shore-mouth no fisher's lamp; / on the sand-spit a heron sleeps.

The one quiet couplet, and the bleakest. 漁火 are the fishermen's lamps that ought to be dotting a river at night and are not there; 鷺 is the egret asleep on the sand-spit. Emptiness, not turbulence, is what makes the place frightening.

Trackless, it seems for all the world a sea; / gaze as you will, there is no farther shore.

渾似海, quite like a sea — 似 is sì. 更 is gèng, "still, all the more": look as long as you like, there is still no far bank. The line hands the problem straight back to Wukong.

Quickly gathering in his cloud, he set down at the river's edge and said: "Master, it's wide, it's wide — there's no crossing it!

And he has no answer. 寬哩 — 哩 is li, the light word that ends a spoken sentence, and doubling the phrase is how a Chinese speaker conveys "very." 去不得 takes 得 as dé; 按落 has 落 as luò, to set down.

Old Sun's fiery eyes and golden pupils can commonly see a thousand lǐ by daylight, and make out fortune from ill;

火眼金睛, fiery eyes and golden pupils, is the sight Wukong came out of Laozi's furnace with, and the one lasting benefit of that ordeal. 曉得 takes 得 as dé. 千里 keeps the Chinese unit 里, lǐ, roughly half a kilometre in Ming reckoning.

even by night I can still see three or five hundred lǐ.

還 is hái, "still"; 看 is kàn. Even at night he manages several hundred lǐ — which is the point of the boast, and of its failure here.

But just now I cannot make out the farther bank at all — how am I to fix the measure of its breadth?"

通看不見: cannot see it through at all, 通 meaning "right the way." 怎定得 takes 得 as dé; 之數 takes 數 as shù, a figure or reckoning. The Great Sage has been reduced to admitting he cannot measure something.